Cheap Welder

[Aptyp]

I thought I'd buy something cheap to mess around with at home. I'd like something that could weld perhaps sheet-metal, exhaust, and other little things like that. Maybe practice at welding aluminum. I have no welding experience, so I'll need something I can learn with.


Help me out with sound advice as I'd like to get something in the next few weeks. I stopped by Harbor Freight and Lowes and prices are just drastically apart so it left as confused as before.

[fiftytakedowns]

harbor freight?

[Aptyp]

2 seconds of googling would have prevented your pointless waste of a post. It's a store with cheap chinese tools named after industrial american cities.

[Need4Speed1299]

Buy a MIG welder for thin steel, than get a kit and spool for aluminum. Lincoln and miller make good welders. I see good deals on them all the time on CL.

[ben312]

2 seconds of googling would have prevented your pointless waste of a post. It's a store with cheap chinese tools named after industrial american cities.

you did say you wanted something cheap to mess around with, well thats the harbor freight model.

[mrsleeve]

good used Miller or lincon with a spool gun for the AL. But really for Al, thin AL and steel you need a tig. Not to say you cant do it with mig, but its just a pain in the ass some times and normally looks like shit compared to what you can do with a tig with a little practice.

Miller makes a good AC/DC (has to be A/C to weld AL) entry level tig machine the "econotig" is a bout 1500 new and can be found used for around 1/2 that. Its a 220v 50amp machine with a 30-40% duty cycle Get the foot pedal for it though if it dose not have one.

I am running a older Lincon SP-140 (110v) mig machine. Dont really like it because it dose not have the heat to do heavy fab, but for the little projects its fine. I dont have a 200amp shop, and wont for a while so I am making do with all 110v stuff. God I miss the shop I grew up with on the farm :(

[ortholithiation]

Cheap and welding don't usally go hand and hand. Depends what you want to do, if you want something serious you need to have 220V, or if you get a 115 at least a 20amp circuit.

I have a lincoln 140 mig, you can do flux core- outside welding and sometimes heavier rusty repair stuff (good penetration), okay for exhaust repair work.

Get some gas, and you can switch to MIG and do thin steel if you are careful. You can do some aluminum with the right wire and gas but its really hard. If you are thinking of fabbing up beautiful intake manifolds I wouldn't try.

A decent 110/115V mig is pretty good for a entry level welding for example:

You need to move bracket for that new intercooler, cut off the bracket, and weld it somewhere else.

With some tubing and some sheet metal, fab up a rear strut bar and save yourself 200$.

[foofopps]

go to northerntool.com for a good cheap welder you can learn on, I bought one there 5 years ago with a auto dimming mask for like $350, I just use flux-core, 120v, its not pretty buy it gets the job done.

[James]

If your looking for something to learn on, a cheap machine isn't going to do you any favors. Spend some extra money and get a miller or Lincoln, their small hobby machines are very reasonable. If you aren't going to be doing anything major a 140-ish machine will do the job, but i'm not sure if those machines will push Al wire without a spool gun.

[der affe]

mrsleve had the best advise. buy a good used welder for a good price, not a cheap welder for a cheap price. you will soon discover that your cheap welder sucks and you wasted your money. keep scanning CL you can find a good deal, but you need to be willing to jump on it. i picked up my matco 200 amp mig for $300 w/o a bottle, it was 1 year old and had barely any hours on it and had been upgraded with a tweeco gun.

spool mig alum rigs SUCK. unless you are building trailers with virgin alum. invvest in decent tig with a cooling tower that is ac/dc and be done.

[Justin B]

der affe speaks the truth. You could probably buy a used Miller or Hobart. They are the same thing, different label, hobart handler 135's and Miller 135's are IDENTICAL, same electronics and all, except for a couple of little relatively insignificant changes as far as a hobbyist is concerned. They're 4-500ish new I think, but I'm sure there's a flood of great weekend warrior welders out there available for half their new price in this economy. My first welder was a Millermatic 175 (220v) and although it was about 800 bucks new, it'll do anything I'll ever want to do with a MIG gun. Don't buy a flux core welder, they spit and spatter and make awful looking welds compared to a true shielded solid wire. I'd suggest looking for one of the bigger 3's, Miller/Hobart, and Lincoln. They all make "135" or "140" welders that will plug into a regular 110v socket, and are just fine to learn on.

As far as your aluminum is concerned, I also shake my head to a MIG spool gun. Not only are they bulky and heavy, they just don't have the natural ability to control like a TIG welder. TIG, like any other form of welding is an absolutely a form of art, and is probably the most challenging to use properly, but it will do almost anything depending on how it's set up.

If you've never welded before, don't even bother touching aluminum yet. Your mild steel weld's are going to look like a cat shat all over it when you're learning. It's no put down, it's just how you learn the technique, what works and what doesn't. A friend of mine has been welding for 22 years, and is still learning new processes and techniques to make his welds more beautius.

[dreamchasin]

don't get one from harbor freight. Colorlesss on here bought one from there. he got it, didnt work, sent it back, they sent him another one, that one didnt work.

[Zaun]

i agree with the above Tig is an art. Tig welding was fun to me

[BUDNUNTA]

I just bought a Miller Diversion 165
Its a TIG with high frequency. I dont know what you want to do with yours but I bought mine to build stainless steel turbo manifolds, intercooler piping, aluminum intake manifolds, ect
Its not all that good for "body work" but really you can use it for anything.
ive never used a TIG before I bought mine and after a few week and lots of reading on the weldingweb.com forum(they have a forum for everything haha) I'm getting better. Honestly ive found the aluminum easier to weld nicely. you can get a bigger puddle and with the high frequency it escentially cleans itself.
Its so fun to use.
It cost about $2k to get it going, Gas, extra consumables, had to buy a bench grinder to sharpen the tungston, helmet
Its just another money pit haha




Hunter

[mrsleeve]

Really the big 3 are Blue boxes = Miller, red boxes = Lincoln, and Yellow boxes= Essab.

As you say hobart are the cheaper hobbiest version of miller and are nearly identical other than some key electronics that lower the duty cycle some compared to a miller. hell the hobarts even come with a miller book. SO I leave the hobart in the blue box category

I'd suggest looking for one of the bigger 3's, Miller/Hobart, and Lincoln.